Page 143 of Watch Me Burn
I turn to face her. Her dark eyes hold mine without flinching. She takes in each word I’ve said, storing them somewhere inside that sharp mind of hers. But the revulsion I’m bracing for never appears.
“Wolfe isn’t my birth name. When I turned eighteen, I had it legally changed.”
“That’s why there’s nothing about your family history in any of the articles about you.”
“Yes. I’ve spent a fortune keeping that secret buried, creating a fictional background that’s rooted in truth. I want no association with the monsters who made me.”
“Did your name come first or your tattoo?”
Her hand drifts up, fingers extended but not quite touching me. I close the distance between us until her hand makes the barest contact with my chest.
“The wolf came first. The night Rex died, my parents locked me in the basement with his dead body. It was the middle of winter and freezing down there. There was nothing to use for warmth except some old hunting magazines I found shoved in a cardboard box.”
Her palm presses against the center of my chest, right over the wolf beneath my shirt.
“I opened them up and laid them over myself. The cover of one showed a massive gray wolf mid-leap through snow.” I place my hand over hers, pressing it firmly against my heartbeat. “Its eyes burned with something I’d never seen before—pure primal fury mixed with intelligence. They weren’t like Rex’s gentle brown eyes. These eyes held something wild. Something that couldn’t be collared or beaten.”
“Something that couldn’t be broken.” Understanding settles into her expression.
“Yes.”
The word comes out rough because, of course, she gets it. She knows wolves better than anyone.
“The wolf symbolized something that would never be too weak to protect what mattered. I tore that cover off and hid it. Under my mattress at home. Then later in my dorm room at school. On the day of my parents’ funeral, I had it tattooed on my chest. That exact wolf, covering my heart. Every year since, I’ve added more. Filled it in as my body filled out.”
“And the writhing bodies?”
“Each one represents an abuser I’ve stopped.” My jaw tightens. “They writhe in eternal torment beneath the wolf’s dominion. Trapped. Suffering. The way their victims suffered.”
I watch her face again, searching for horror or disgust, but I see nothing but tenderness. A recognition of pain she can’t fix but refuses to look away from. Her fingers press harder into my flesh, and mine wrap around hers, needing her touch like my next breath.
“Taking the name Wolfe wasn’t just about the tattoo, was it?”
“No. It was about claiming my transformation. Honoring what I became that night in the basement. Wolves kill for survival, never for sport or cruelty. They protect their pack. They’re loyal and fierce and uncompromising. Everything my parents weren’t. Everything I swore I’d become. The name Wolfe is who I was meant to be all along, forged in trauma and fire and the death of everything innocent in me.”
“The wolf is your true self.” She looks up at me, her hazel eyes shimmering. “The version of you that was born when the boy died.”
“Yes.” My throat closes around the word.
She takes a step backward, her hand falling away from my chest, and the absence of her touch feels like a wound opening.
“And now, you use all your money to track animal abusers and make them pay for their crimes when the law fails.”
“Yes. I memorialize every single one, so I never forget what they took from the world.”
I study her face and keep looking for the condemnation I deserve, for the disgust that should be driving her away from me, but I find neither. Just pain and sorrow etched into every beautiful line.
“They all get exactly what they deserve.” I move closer, unable to stand the distance between us. “I know reconciling that is hard for someone as good as you. Someone who spends every day saving lives. But I think you understand it on some level. You’ve experienced that same darkness rising up inside you.”
“I’m not like you.”
“Aren’t you?” I reach out because I can’t stop myself from touching her. Her skin is warm beneath my fingertips as I brush a strand of hair away from her face. She trembles under my touch. “I’ve seen it in your eyes when you’re treating an abused animal. That need for retribution.”
Luna steps back, creating distance again, and for a moment panic flares in my chest—the certainty that I’ve finally said too much and lost her. She paces across the room, running her fingers through her hair like she’s trying to sort through everything I’ve just laid at her feet.
“Feeling something isn’t the same as acting on it.”
“No.” I follow her with my eyes. “It’s not. But you helped cover up Caleb’s death. You made a choice.”
